Been struggling to get booted, finally realized that I can boot just fine with 1 stick of RAM in but not both. Installed a very beta BIOS supplied to me by a friendly local AMD employee, and struggled to install Windows until I just unhooked all my drives but the M2 drive.

Did you install Windows by prepping a UEFI-aware USB key, disable CSM in the UEFI, and enable fastboot? All of this is required to reliably install to and boot from NVMe. NVMe is a new standard and OSes haven't made it easy yet.

Still waiting on my Swiftech cooler. In the meantime, I bought a $5 bracket at Micro Center that was made for Coolermaster Hyper X coolers but sort-of fits my SAPPHIRE Vapor X air cooler. I say "sort-of" because it technically fits and is clamped properly and is working, but the bolts are too high for the fans and so I only have one fan on it right now in a janky sort of way (only one side is clipped - it's enough to just sit on the heatsink and push air through it).

On this half-ass cooling setup I am at a stable 3.9ghz overclock, so.... should be fun to get a real cooler on this thing.

Ahhhhh, is there enough of a performance boost to justify it vs. The $329 1700? From reviews I have read the advertised 3.0 on the 1700 is actually stock clocking at 3.2 in CPUz, seems like it is just as easy getting it to 3.9 or so at 1.3 volts just using that Spire cooler. 1800X best stable overclock I have seen anyone get is about 4.2.

Saw a post on Reddit saying basically the same as you, Cliff. I guess what's left is interpretation. To me, that's not enough of a difference to justify the price, but it's also not totally extravagant, so I'd hardly fault someone for getting an 1800X.

If the only thing biased reviewers could find to pick on is 1080p gaming where the results will just as likely be bottle necked at the GPU for most people (when they enable AA, AF, and other visual goodies).. and if they are not GPU limited, still running well over 60 fps on everything.... I'm not sure the review game is up to date, or.... They just invented a really lame justification for Intel.

My one gripe with the release is that I don't see a really compelling difference from 1700 to 1800X to justify a $170 gap in pricing. It is a little confusing, especially since I almost feel like the most compelling part is the 1700 due to it's low thermal output. I want AMD to overcome the odds and start punching Intel square in the nose again. Part of me feels like someone in marketing was like, hey, we just need a $500 part to say we have a part worth paying $500 for again. Which I can sort of understand from a psychological market perception standpoint. That said, I am not seeing why anyone would buy anything other than the 1700 at $329 with this first release. It does not seem like you even have to increase voltage to at least get it to 1700X speeds, so I may do that, not 100% sure yet though, may wait for the six core, see where they price.

I'm dipping my toe into the Ryzen hype train... which is to say I'm starting to theorycraft my upgrade. I'm planning to reuse my current video card and power supply, at least for the time being, because I want to keep the price on this build down. This is what I have currently:

I guess I should also say, my bulk storage is going to be offloaded to my NAS. The m.2 drive will have my OS and any big games I'm actively playing. Smaller games or ones that I play less frequently would be migrated to a network drive on the NAS (I'm far from the first person to ever do this, and by all accounts it works just fine over 1G wired network). I'm led to believe that this has been made much easier in more recent versions of the Steam client, specifically the ability to migrate games between drives is baked in. If I find myself really needing more storage built in, I will just get a 2.5" SSD and add it at a later date.

@primesuspect said:
Just out of curiosity: If you want to keep the price down, the motherboard has a perfectly good sound controller on-board. Any super-compelling reason you would get a discreet sound card?

On board doesn't do 5.1 sound, and I have a 5.1 system in my office. Plus, I've never felt particularly happy with onboard audio. I seem to always get extra noise on the line.

My #1 gripe with the launch is that the Micro boards are all kind of lame. I'll gladly pay $130-150 or so for a Micro ATX offering with the best electronic components, build and top line integrated audio. Newer boards are doing a great job at isolating the audio circuit, my AM3+ Gigabyte gaming board has a fantastic isolated circuit and even the headphone amp drives nicely. I want to shrink my build, I want a premium board to do it on, Ryzen has not gotten around to that yet.

Well... that's good at least... My AM2+ Gigabyte board has horrible isolation. Drives me crazy. I also wish there was a Micro ATX board with a well isolated 5.1 (or better) on board. I really like the idea of building a small rig that can sit on my desk this time.

@primesuspect said:
Just out of curiosity: If you want to keep the price down, the motherboard has a perfectly good sound controller on-board. Any super-compelling reason you would get a discreet sound card?

On board doesn't do 5.1 sound, and I have a 5.1 system in my office. Plus, I've never felt particularly happy with onboard audio. I seem to always get extra noise on the line.

The specs for the onboard audio say 8 channels, am I missing something?

@primesuspect said:
Just out of curiosity: If you want to keep the price down, the motherboard has a perfectly good sound controller on-board. Any super-compelling reason you would get a discreet sound card?

On board doesn't do 5.1 sound, and I have a 5.1 system in my office. Plus, I've never felt particularly happy with onboard audio. I seem to always get extra noise on the line.

The specs for the onboard audio say 8 channels, am I missing something?

On-motherboard analog audio solutions have universally terrible electrical ground isolation schemes which result in amplifying electrical noise from the rest of the motherboard. The result? Constant humming and clicks/pops whenever the power usage changes drastically.

@ardichoke should know better: the only winning move is not to play. Use digital audio to an external box with good design or get a discrete sound card if you need analog.